Characterization of a collective action between farmers' organizations and institutions in an innovative process to face liberalization in Costa Rica

In Northern Costa Rica, agricultural production conditions change very rapidly due to public policies that encourage the exportation of new crops according to the liberalization process imposed by the international context.

For many years, farmers' organizations at the local, regional and national levels have taken initiatives to respond to this new context and develop relationships with institutions (the Ministry of Agriculture, national universities, NGOs, international agencies, the private sector) promoting innovations and attaining better access to information, training and financial resources. An action-research program, ‘Aid to Farmer's Organization of Northern Costa Rica’, contributes to the strengthening of farmers' organizations and tries to induce change dynamics through the elaboration of a shared vision of peasant agriculture implying the production of safe food, the protection of natural resources, the development of qualified local employment and the defense of the rural culture.

The present paper will analyze the dynamics of such a collective action. Action is structured around various activities such as the exchange of experiences between farmers' organizations, the elaboration of a common vision on the future of family agriculture between different actors, the training of the members and leaders of organizations and the design and implementation of innovative project.

This collective action induces the construction of new and useful knowledge, changes in the relationships between the actors, the implementation of new institutional mechanisms and the development of new rules inside and outside the organizations.     

The (mis)interpretation of teaching evaluations by college faculty and administrators

Student evaluations of teaching are ubiquitous and impactful on the careers of college teachers. However, there is limited empirical research documenting the accuracy of people’s efforts in interpreting teaching evaluations. The current research consisted of three studies documenting the effect of small mean differences in teaching evaluations on judgements about teachers. Differences in means small enough to be within the margin of error significantly impacted faculty members’ assignment of merit-based rewards (Study 1), department heads’ evaluation of teaching techniques (Study 2) and faculty members’ evaluation of specific teaching skills (Study 3). The results suggest that faculty and administrators do not apply appropriate statistical principles when evaluating teaching evaluations and instead use a general heuristic that higher evaluations are better.     

The War: The Story of One Rural College's Battle for Survival

This paper intends to describe the recent experience of a small, rural, two-year technical college. After four decades of success, the college had found itself in a difficult situation with a substantial loss in enrollment and diminished state and local support, coupled with low campus employee morale. In response, the college team closed ranks and rallied in what has become quite a proactive and successful effort to reinvent itself. After nearly six years of working to correct a number of issues that had led to decline, the college gained a general sense of stabilization, made advances in existing and new academic programs and technical innovation, dramatically increased diversity, and enhanced student life opportunities with the addition of an array of successful athletic programs. The college has seen significant increases in enrollment, state and national recognition for technical initiatives, and a collectively positive sense of the future.     

Dealing with Power Games in a Companion Modelling Process: Lessons from Community Water Management in Thailand Highlands

Abstract

Although stakeholder participation is expected to promote equitable and sustainable natural resource management, lessons from the past tell us that more careful attention needs to be paid to achieving equitable impacts. Now the question is how to address social inequities and power asymmetries. Some authors emphasize the need for more dialogue, while others prefer a critical perspective, arguing that dialogue might not be sufficient to avert the risk of a process deepening existing social inequities. This article aims to enrich this debate and question the practical implications of the critical perspective through an in-depth analysis of power games in a participatory process.

A Companion Modelling (ComMod) process was conducted in an Akha community of Northern Thailand with a critical perspective, i.e. with a concern for the less influent stakeholders. Simulation tools such as role-playing games were used to mediate a cross-cultural learning process among researchers, farmers and administrators about a local irrigation water management problem. The detailed analysis of power games in this learning and negotiation process reveals that in spite of initial power asymmetries, the poorest farmers of the community started to voice and assert their interests. This was very much due to the role of a Western researcher who put the equity issue on the public agenda and to the strategic support of a charismatic Christian leader.

We identify a set of practical facilitation methods that helped to manage power asymmetries and to level the playing field, but we also discuss the main limits of our cultural-embedded methodological choices. Acknowledging that ‘the facilitators’ neutrality' is an illusion, this study allows us to raise the question of their social legitimacy. We suggest that they should systematically make explicit and reflect on their cultural-ideological background and methodological hypothesis and choices and their effects on the socio-political context. This article is an original attempt to accept this challenge.     

New books

A List of Plays for High School and College Production. Prepared by the Committee on Plays for Secondary Schools and Colleges of the Drama League‐of America, and the Committee on Plays for Schools and Colleges of the National Council of Teachers of English. Chicago: The ‘ Drama League of America, 1916. Pp. 41. Paper, $0.25.

Teaching Literature in the Grammar Grades and High School. By Emma Miller Bolenitjs, A.M. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1915. Pp. 337. $1.25.

Practical Stage Directing for Amateurs. By Emerson Taylor. New York: Walton & Co., 1915. Pp. 193. $1.00.

The Natural Method of Voice Production in Speech and Song. By Floyd S. Muckey, M.D.C.M., New York: Scribner, 1915. Cloth, pp. 149. $1.00.

Public Speaking. By James Albert Winans. Ithaca, N.Y.: Sewell Publishing Co., 1915. Cloth, pp. xlii+476. $1.50.

Practical Argumentation. By George A. Pattee. New York: Century Co., 1915.

Oral English. By John M. Brewer. New York: Ginn & Co., 1916. Cloth, pp. 3960 $1.00.     

Hands-on at a Distance: Evaluation of a Temperature and Heat Distance Learning Course

The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all teachers be certified within the content areas that they teach. However, attracting and retaining highly qualified science teachers in rural school districts is particularly difficult due to limited resources and geographic and professional isolation. Science professional development programs could help improve inservice teachers’ understanding of concepts they are expected to teach, but such programs are often limited in rural areas. This study evaluates a unique distance learning, inquiry-based professional development course in physical science developed to meet the needs of central Appalachian middle school teachers. Instruction through hands-on inquiry investigations distinguishes this program from other distance learning programs. Preliminary findings from the pilot study reported in this paper reveal significant growth in 43 teachers’ content knowledge for six of nine temperature and heat concepts assessed in the course. Outcomes from the distance learning project are discussed as they relate to future research goals and implications for science professional development programs in rural regions.     

Flaying Freire? The Workers’ Party and education policy in Brazil, 1980–2007

This article analyses the progression of education policy by the Workers?? Party (PT) in Brazil from its experience of municipal administration to national government. The first section presents this development, noting its progression from a participatory, social(ist) project to a more reformist, elite-directed model. The second section accounts for the domestic influences that led to a more reformist PT education policy by the 2000s. These include: (1) increasing electoral success, (2) changing membership composition, (3) policy innovations supported by its members and (4) a growing asymmetry in resources (and influence) towards the party leadership and its members. The third section presents the global changes in education thinking that coincided with the PT??s entry into national government. It distinguishes between a neo-liberal and neo-conservative ??first generation?? and a state-oriented ??second generation?? Washington Consensus, associated with the New Right and the centre-left that emerged across the region after 2000 respectively.     

Transpacific precarities: responding to Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Found and Rita Wong’s forage in East Asia

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates the stakes involved in responding to transpacific texts in East Asia, specifically in universities in Macau and Taiwan. It focuses on responses to two texts that represent in distinct ways precariatized lives in a transpacific frame: Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Found, a text that uncovers a path from Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand to Canada, a path made legible through a scrapbook kept by Thammavongsa’s father; and Rita Wong’s forage, a text that cuts across and between South China and North America to track the movements of peoples and goods and waste, including the movement of electronic waste (or “e-waste”). By discussing selected responses to these texts, this essay investigates how such responses can be considered as part of a long-term pedagogical process of cultivating imaginations and striving to develop forms of responsibility to what this essay calls transpacific precarities. It suggests that carefully attending to such responses, always partial and in progress, can help us to better understand Asian American studies in East Asia as it continues to evolve through acts of teaching and learning in different sites.